


in the dust we shine

by transstevebucky



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Blind Character, Bottom Daryl Dixon, F/F, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Light Angst, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spanking, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-15 04:22:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13605432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transstevebucky/pseuds/transstevebucky
Summary: Daryl’s not sure when, exactly, this thing with he and Jesus started, but he does know it’s going to kill him.





	in the dust we shine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [baku_midnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/baku_midnight/gifts).



> hey, baku_midnight! i hope this satisfies all your needs and wants!! i had a great time writing it!
> 
> warnings/disclaimers before you read: i'm a gay trans guy, and in this fic so is daryl; daryl's genitalia is never called by anything except a cock/dick, just in case you might have a lot of dysphoria and get triggered by that sort of thing! as for content: there's spanking, light d/s, and bottom daryl. in case it reads that way, this is never meant to be a "trans people are bottoms things", since uh, i am trans, and i'm not a bottom, and that's just how i see daryl's character anyway. also paul rovia made a joke about fingering the first time they met and that's such an eternal mood, so. also, as in canon, daryl has depression/ptsd, and issues with self harm and self worth, so please be aware of that!
> 
>  
> 
> title from 'fire n gold' by bea miller

**________**

Daryl’s not sure when, exactly, this thing with he and Jesus started, but he does know that it’s going to kill him.

He’s just got back from a three-day-long hunt, covered in walker blood and his own from scrapes he’d gotten weaving through underbrush, so more than anything he wants to hand over the wild boar to the cooks, lay down in a nest of pillows and go the fuck to sleep. 

He doesn’t get the chance. The first thing Jesus does once Daryl gets through the door to their shitty little trailer at the edge of Hilltop is push him against the wall and fuck his mouth with his tongue.

“Smell terrible,” Jesus tells him, hand fumbling for his belt like they haven’t been doing this for a while, like he hasn’t got this down to a fine art. A second later, Daryl’s jeans go loose. “Godawful. Should be shot for your crimes against my nose.”

“Ain’t very sincere when you’ve got a hand on my dick,” Daryl informs him, and thumps his head back against the wall with a sigh at a twist of Jesus’ wrist, the way he likes it.

“Missed this,” Jesus tells him, and sucks a bruising kiss to the curve of Daryl’s throat. “Been thinking about fucking you since you left.”

Daryl snorts. It’s not a shock; Jesus is all hands-on, trembling, red-hot mouth in the middle of the dark. More than once, Daryl’s been woken up by a mouth on his thigh, teeth grazing the thin skin.

“Gotta shower. Then you can put that thinkin’ to some use, yeah, Rovia?”

Jesus makes a displeased noise, works his hand further over Daryl’s cock until he has to close his eyes against the onslaught of pleasure. “No,” he says, sounding smug, “ _there_ you go.”

As he said: it’s going to kill him.

**________**

For all he and Jesus fought, before and during the war, everyone acts like they’ve always been best friends.

Like Daryl showed up to Alexandria with a smug hippie bastard at his side and this thing between them isn’t new or terrifying.

Maybe it isn’t. Maybe his family knows him better than he gives them credit for.

Rick, at least, treats Jesus like Daryl’s fifth limb, like they’re inseparable. It’s not… Not true, but it’s also just a little embarrassing. That Rick doesn’t even have to ask for them to agree to go on a run together, or do some peacekeeping around Alexandria or Hilltop, be the run-between for the Kingdom. He and Jesus spend a lot of time together, sure, but they don’t go everywhere together.

So what if Daryl usually hates company on hunts and now he and Jesus are strolling through the woods on a bi-weekly basis, talking low? So what if Jesus likes to hold everyone at arms length, but lets Daryl into secrets like it’s nothing?

It doesn’t mean anything. Daryl’s sure of it.

That doesn’t make it easier to deal with when Jesus gives him a leer across the dinner table, and he has to quiet the buzz of nerves in his gut with a too-large mouthful of instant mashed potato.

________

Here’s the thing: Carol’s all-knowing.

It’s something he’s been hyper aware of since the prison, or maybe the farm; that Carol is unfuckwithable, doesn’t take no for an answer, is a mother through to her very bones, and will stop at nothing to coddle him until he’s pink in the cheeks and overly full.

It’s not really a surprise that she follows him up the ladder to Alexandria’s watch post, but it makes his gut sink anyway.

“What d’you want, woman?” He grunts, watches as a walker ambles itself forward and impales itself rather spectacularly on one of the armored cars.

“Nothing,” she tells him, in a voice that means _I know all your secrets and I will use them to blackmail you if you give me the chance_ , “I just missed you, pookie.”

“Right.” He says on a snort, leans back against the metal walls with the sprawl of a man who isn’t calm but is trying to be. It doesn’t go past her notice, but she deftly ignores it, because it’s not in her plans.

“So,” her voice is saccharine sweet, downright terrifying, “how’s your boy-toy?”

Daryl chokes on air, and she gives him the victorious grin of a woman who knew she was right but loves being proved so anyway. “Ain’t my goddamn - boy-toy, what the fuck!”

“Oh, but you knew who I was talking about, didn’t you?”

Fuck. He has to stop falling for this shit. 

Daryl wonders if Rick’s still got that spare .38 in his attic, or if he got rid of it when Daryl went and moved to Hilltop after the war. He wants to paint the wall blood-red with brain splatters over this fucking conversation.

“We ain’t,” he says, and then doesn’t know how to finish. Technically, in the strictest, most obvious of senses, they are lovers. Or… They’re fucking, anyway. Near constantly, since Jesus is seductive and wanton and Daryl’s downright needy when he needs a good lay, but they’re not anything special. The thought makes something twist in his gut, and he looks at Carol to ignore it.

She looks good. Happy, face softer than it has been in a while. He remembers the months of the war; watching her clean blood from under her nails and go into battle like a woman possessed, love tearing in his chest because she’s family, he adores her, he’d do anything for her, and watching her break apart with every kill made him want to fall apart in a way he hasn’t since after Jesus broke him out of the Sanctuary. He knows a lot of her happiness comes from Ezekiel, the way he treasures the ground she walks on, and the rest is from the peace; no war, no anger, but rebuilding and settling. Like the time at the prison, when the stress around her eyes had disappeared almost completely.

He’d do anything to keep her like that, and doesn’t doubt Ezekiel would do the same. (Which is part of the reason he likes the guy, honestly, besides the obvious fact of him being pretty cool and also pretty hot, weird roleplaying aside).

“Ain’t lovers,” he finishes, and she just shakes her box of cookies at him. It’s weirdly threatening. Carl had told him once that she tried to kill him with them, and now he’s wondering whether he should have believed the kid. “Just…”

“Friends?” Carol asks, something hidden behind her pale eyes. “With… what did Carl call it? Benefits?”

“I hate speakin’ to you,” Daryl tells her, and pulls her into a hug. She brushes a hand over his back in a loving gesture. “Missed you, man.”

“Well,” Carol says with a huff, and straightens out his collar. “Shouldn’t be such a stranger, then, pookie. Maybe we can start our torrid love affair up again.”

Daryl huffs a breath of amusement at her, and her eyes crinkle in response. “Anyway. We just -. You know… Fuck.”

Carol cackles, and a walker down below looks up and growls. They’re sort of like guard dogs, if guard dogs smelled like death and rot and looked like a person that they’ve long since stopped being. So. Maybe not like guard dogs at all. “It’s nice,” she tells him, “seeing you happy. I’m glad you like it there. I don’t think you ever fit here.”

Daryl knows what she means. The crawling skin whenever he climbed the stairs of the home they’d been given, feeling like he didn’t belong. Spending hours in Aaron and Eric’s garage just so he didn’t have to think about how he’d never had this kind of place before, and having it now felt even more wrong. And now, how Hilltop is a home to him, his and Jesus’ shitty trailer, strewn with books and bits of fur from skinned rabbits.

It’s good. Better than good, really, since he’s got everything he needs and more, and his family is safe, alive, happy.

“Back at you.”

He takes a cookie, chews it, and thinks of long hair and blue eyes and sparring.

________

“Never have I ever.”

“Oh, nah,” Daryl grunts, shoving his chair back and trying to work out if jumping from the balcony is too dramatic, “ain’t playin’ that.”

“It’s a terrible idea,” Jesus agrees, and starts setting out a line of shot glasses. They’re in the color of a rainbow, ‘cause the guy’s nothing if not a stereotype. Daryl… Likes it. A lot. He prefers not thinking about it.

“Aw, c’mon,” Glenn sighs, lounging back in his chair. His eyes are milky white and dull, these days, but Daryl can still tell when he’s rolling them. “It’ll be fun!”

“It won’t,” Daryl grunts. “You can’t hold your goddamn alcohol any more, the fuck makes you think a drinking game is a good idea?”

Glenn settles him with a withering look, face twisted up into something that looks so much like Hershel when he’s just shit his pants that Daryl has to stifle a snort of laughter into his wrist.

Jesus gives him a Look like he knows what’s going on, but then he goes right back to sloshing whiskey into the glasses. “It’ll help us relax?”

“You jus’ wanna know everyone’s secrets, asshole,” Daryl sighs, but they both know he’s not going to say no. Glenn grins triumphantly, and Daryl mumbles about _shouldn’t’a saved your ass from that blast you blind sumbitch_. 

Glenn just snorts.

“Alright. Let’s start.”

Daryl stares at Glenn and Jesus across the table, and they stare back at him. “Oh, fuckin’ Christ, fine. Never have I ever...owned a pet.”

Jesus rolls his eyes, but knocks a shot back, line of his throat coming into sweet relief for a split-second before he drops the glass back down. 

Glenn makes a sad face. “My apartment building never let me keep them.”

Daryl downs a shot, and Jesus grins.

“No shit?” He asks, almost bouncing. Daryl knew he was right, the prick. “What was it?”

“A cat,” Daryl sighs, “well. Sorta. It was a bobcat. Started followin’ me round in the woods and I felt too bad ‘bout killing it. Brought it home. Fed it up.”

Glenn’s grinning about three inches at the left of Daryl’s shoulder, but it’s close, considering. “Really? What did you call it?”

“...” Daryl considers dragging all the glasses towards himself and drinking them all until he can’t see any more. “Sir Bubbles the Third.”

There’s a beat of silence.

And then Jesus and Glenn fall into giggles next to each other, pawing for relief. Glenn’s eyes are watering, but since that’s a pretty common occurrence Daryl pretends it’s not because of him.

“Who were the other two?” Jesus asks on a gasp.

Daryl wishes he was dead. No, wait. He wishes Jesus was dead. Yes. That’s better. “There weren’t any. Jus’ felt right.”

“Oh, my god,” Glenn wheezes, cheeks gone pink, “this is the best day of my life.”

“Next time you get hit by a blast, ‘m takin’ your goddamn arms, too.”

They get through a bottle and a half’s worth of shots before it starts getting characteristically dirty. The grin that lights up Jesus’ face is more of a leer than it is a smile, and Daryl can already feel hot regret in his gut, swirling around with arousal he’s just barely staving off.

“Never have I ever eaten ass,” he declares, and then slams down three shots before Daryl or Glenn can even begin to respond.

Glenn chokes on his breath, and shoves the shots away. “I think torture against a blind man is illegal.”

“Call the cops,” Daryl says, and winks at Jesus while he drinks. Jesus’s cheeks flush red, and he drops his face into his hand with a soft giggle.

“Never have I ever,” Glenn grunts, and his pale eyes roll in his head, like they’re thinking for him. Daryl’s just drunk enough that the guilt of him not being able to see fades out into amusement. Glenn’s come so far from staring unseeingly at the window in the main meeting room of Barrington House. It makes his heart hurt. He takes a drink of terrible, cheap vodka before Glenn even finishes. “Used handcuffs in the bedroom.”

“Ugh,” Daryl says, while Jesus declares, “you’re so fucking boring,” and drinks.

Glenn blinks once, twice, and then, “I wasn’t going to ask about hardcore bondage, you fucking assholes. It’s four in the afternoon!”

Daryl considers a response, and decides he doesn’t want to give one. Just focuses on his hands, calloused and scarred around the neck of the bottle he’s holding, rolling between his fingers without letting it slip. It’s soothing. He thinks maybe he’d read about it in that book about abuse he’d stolen that time, about grounding textures and objects, but he’s too drunk to focus on the line of thought.

“Never have I ever bumped uglies with someone in an alleyway.”

All of them regard each other uncomfortably (Glenn flicking his eyes somewhere three feet left of Daryl, and at Jesus’ forehead), and they all drink.

“God, we are all skanks,” Jesus sighs, and then bursts into giggles.

+++

By the time Maggie’s back, caked in mud and sweat, Jesus is lounging across Glenn’s legs, and Daryl’s just close enough to drunk that he’s starting to ease into his skin a bit more. 

“Never have I ever,” Jesus begins, and taps at his lips with clumsy fingers, “came so hard I couldn’t think.”

Glenn twists his head around and makes a low growling noise, like he’s disgusted by where this is going, but he takes a slurp out of a bottle of whiskey anyway. They’d abandoned the glasses ages ago; piled them up in the sink across the hall and then slithered back into the room to curl up on the floor together, like some freaky amoebas.

Daryl drinks, and after a moment so does Jesus. 

“Where’s the deets?” Jesus whines, making wiggly fingers at Daryl and pouting. He’s so gorgeous like this it makes Daryl’s chest _burn_ , cheeks pink and glowing, hair tugged out of his face in a messy bun, mouth red from biting at it all evening.

“Deets for what?” A faintly amused voice calls from above them, and it’s testament to how safe Daryl feels around these people he doesn’t even flinch. Just leers up at Maggie and hiccups. “Oh, Christ, really?”

“Only,” Glenn says, wriggling up and patting Jesus’ head when he whines about being dumped unceremoniously onto the floor, “like, two bottles? With shots. And. We spilled some, ‘cause Jesus can’t… Pour. He’s a wightleight. Wait. A… lightweight? Yeah!”

Maggie says and kneels, grime covering her from head to toe, and gives her husband a kiss that’s mostly placating but that Glenn sounds really happy about anyway.

Jesus stares at him over them, and mouths _they should be ashamed_. Daryl snorts. Jesus grins, wide and true, teeth glinting in the light, and Daryl realises suddenly, sharply, that this is home, now, too.

That home doesn’t just come in people, now, not in Rick’s hugs or Carol’s feeding him up, not in Michonne’s knowing glances, not in the way Carl grins when Daryl promises to teach him to hunt. It doesn’t come in the warmth of gazes across a room cleaned so thoroughly it smells more like bleach than anything else.

It comes at Hilltop, and Alexandria, and the Kingdom.

He’s never had anywhere to call home that didn’t fit wrong. That didn’t make his neck prickle.

Home has always been about the people at his six.

As he smiles at Jesus, Maggie making soothing noises and stroking Glenn’s face with dirty hands, he thinks _huh_ , and then, _this is what safety feels like_.

________

“This is stupid.”

“No, it’s not,” Jesus says, but there’s stress lines around his eyes, lip gone pale from the pressure of his teeth.

“We can stop,” Daryl tells him, “spare your pride.”

Jesus gives him a stern glare, makes a soft _ngh_ noise, and that shouldn’t be hot, considering what they’re doing. 

Their hands are clenched around each other on the bench, arms rippling with effort, members of Hilltop watching them eagerly. He knows for a fact that Earl’s betting on him to win, and he likes the guy, so he really does want to win. 

“You sure you can take this?” Daryl asks, teasing, as Jesus’ arm slips an inch to the right, closer to the scrubbed wood.

“Fuck off.” 

Enid’s bouncing from foot to foot over Paul’s shoulder, because she bet on him and she hates losing. Last time she joined in on a game of Monopoly she set fire to the board, and Carl had looked at her with stars in his eyes, the little pyromaniac.

Jesus gives a heave, and Daryl’s arm stays where it’s been for the last ten minutes; rigidly upright, fingers warm from pressure and the sun draping over them like a blanket. 

Daryl leans in closer, pitches his voice so only Jesus can hear, “if ya let me win, I’ll let y’fuck me over the kitchen table.”

Jesus’s eyes blow black, and his arm slips its grip for a second, and then strengthens up. With what must be all the strength in his tightly-packed body, he pushes Daryl’s arm to the side, and even with Daryl trying to keep himself steady, it slides close to the table before he can stop it.

“C’mon,” Daryl says, “you don’t wanna see what I got on that run?”

Jesus takes a moment to look at Daryl’s face, eyes darting all over like he’s trying to read him, the lines next to his eyes, the clench of his jaw. “You mean that thing you hid from me?”

“Maybe I’ll stop hiding it,” Daryl says with a one-shouldered shrug, “if you let me win.”

“Nope,” Jesus says, and then, eyes lighting up with menace, easily smacks Daryl’s arm down to the table.

Through the yells of despair from the people who bet on him, he can’t help being weirdly aroused by it; that Jesus played him and then beat him into submission. Christ, maybe he’ll show him those leather cuffs anyway.

Jesus gives him a smug look as Enid hops onto his back with a hoot, and Daryl just flashes him a smile in return, even when Maggie smacks him in the head for losing her a chicken.

 _Worth it,_ he thinks, massaging his wrist. _Definitely worth it._

________

Jesus is drunk.

Or at least getting there, judging by the way he’s weaving on his feet, eyes just a little glassy. Maggie’d told him two hours ago to keep an eye on him, because last time he got tipsy he’d ran up Barrington House like spiderman and then fell asleep on the roof.

So he is. Keeping an eye on him, that is.

It turns out to be harder than he thought, steering a tipsy Paul Rovia around by the shoulder, making sure he doesn’t get knocked out through drunken clumsiness. 

“Don’t need to be here,” Jesus tells him on a hiccup, chest vibrating with it. Daryl sighs and tries to get him to drink water, but he sloshes it down his front with an unimpressed scowl. “I got this.”

“Oh, do you?” Daryl asks, and gestures at Jesus’ swaying, drunken form, hair a mess like Daryl only ever sees it when he’s getting fucked into a coma. “Walk in a straight line, then.”

He releases Jesus, and Jesus gives him a haughty middle finger, and promptly trips over his own feet and lands sprawled in the grass. 

“Yeah,” Daryl tells him, and settles down, since Jesus doesn’t seem to want to move, “that’s what I thought.”

Jesus paws at his shoulder, and Daryl shifts closer so he can nuzzle himself close like a particularly touch starved cat. He makes a soft noise against Dary’s throat, and Daryl squints at the sky to ignore the way his gut clenches at it.

“Like being drunk.” Jesus tells him, voice sweet, “s’fun. Makes everything fade away.”

“Mmhm.”

“And,” Jesus adds, nose brushing against Daryl’s cheek, “parties aren’t that bad. If you’re here, I guess.”

“Thanks,” Daryl snorts, sarcastic, but is also secretly touched. Jesus hates parties, which was a revelation Daryl had at the celebration of the end of the war, when he’d gone and hidden in one of the tiny closet rooms in Barrington and taken a nap.

Around them, it’s all loud music and off-key singing and his heart hurts at the thought of Beth, how she used to fill the prison up with laughter and light without even thinking about it, because she was always a good kid. It hurts less to think of her now than it had before, when the wound was fresher; easier to think it all through and know that she wouldn’t want any of them to be suffering. She’s a good memory in a sea of bad ones, and that’s rare, Daryl’s not going to taint it.

She’d love this party, he thinks, her nephew’s first birthday being really, properly celebrated. Would probably sing for him, too.

“You should drink,” Jesus tells him, voice gone a little loose, more of a drawl than it normally is, “it only tastes a little like piss.”

“Well, if it’s only a _little_ ,” Daryl mocks, and Paul sticks his tongue out and then licks a stripe over Daryl’s throat, and suddenly he can’t think much about teasing him because all he can think about is the way Jesus’d held him down over the dining table last night and fucked him until he’d cried.

Good fucking Christ.

“Wanna fuck?” Jesus asks, and it’s the slur in his voice that makes Daryl pull away, if a little bit begrudging. 

“When you’re sober,” Daryl tells him, “Maggie’ll cut m’cock off if I hurt ya.”

“Nah,” Jesus says soothingly, patting Daryl’s stomach, “she loves you.”

Which might be true. But regardless, Daryl’s not risking it. He’s seen her throw a punch and he’d sooner be trapped in a horde of walkers than feel the full weight of her wrath.

Daryl maneuvers himself into standing, and Jesus takes his hand with a leer and an eyebrow wiggle that’s less refined than it usually is.

“Ain’t gonna fuck,” Daryl tells him, and shoves him into a passerby he knows loves Jesus, “now tell Maggie goodnight an’ go the fuck to bed, prick.”

“You spoil me!” Jesus calls over the person’s shoulder, and Daryl covers his smile in his sleeve.

______

Daryl’s not sure when he became the live-in babysitter for any new parents, but it’s not something he’s ashamed of, or even particularly eager to put a stop to.

He’s spent the last three days with Judith snuggled close to his side at all times while he helps her piece together a puzzle Jesus’d gotten her last month; Michonne and Rick are on some run-slash-honeymoon that everyone’s pretending is for a real purpose instead of admitting their fearless leader just wants to get nasty in Alexandria’s big Winnebago.

Carl could probably take care of her (kid has a soft spot the size of the sun for his baby sister), but he’d taken one look at Daryl and decided it was his turn.

Anyway. It’s not like he cares; he’s felt attached to the kid since the prison, and that hasn’t changed from her slowly forming a cheery personality.

She doesn’t get it from Rick.

“Aw,” Tara coos at him, when he’s got her hitched up on one hip and making spaghetti with the hand not drifting through her soft hair, “look at you. Stay at home house husband.”

“Fuck off,” Daryl mouths, and Tara sticks her tongue out and grabs for a piece of partially uncooked spaghetti.

Even Judith looks at her like she’s disgusted.

Tara settles herself onto the counter, uncaring that Daryl’s giving off harsh _don’t fuck with me_ vibes, which is half the reason he feels so close to her. She doesn’t take it personally when he wants to go silent, and she fills the air with enough chatter to put Carl to shame. 

“D’you ever think about it?” She asks, feet kicking against the cupboards. Judith is tapping happily at Daryl’s side to the tune she’s making. 

“‘Bout what?” He replies, because he doesn’t care about himself, apparently. Last time Tara started a conversation with that it ended with him being gifted a box full of handcuffs and sex toys.

“Having kids of your own.” Tara curls a finger in Judith’s hair and Judy makes a sweet little humming noise and moves into the touch. Daryl’s heart doesn’t go warm because of it. “Y’know, raising them from the start?”

“No,” Daryl tells her, which isn’t exactly a lie, but isn’t exactly the truth either. He’s thought about having kids, but mostly it’s filled with bone-deep terror of not being good enough and being like his pa, tainting someone innocent and young with his mediocrity. He’d like it, he thinks; but then the reminder that this is the world they live in, where adults don’t often live past fifty, where kids are so frequently buried before their eighteenth birthday kicks in, and he stops thinking. He’ll settle for caring for Judith and baby Hershel and Gracie until he keels over, for treating Carl like the son he’d never had.

The thought of losing them, who aren’t even his by genetics even if Rick insists they’re family, these kids he’s seen grow from small and helpless to strong and thriving… It breaks his heart.

“Really?” Tara asks, and Judith finally separates from Daryl’s side and clambers into Tara’s lap. Daryl uses the extra hand to start sorting out the rabbit mince he’d made last week, browning it and feeling hunger curl into his stomach. It’s been longer than it usually has since he’s eaten.

Last time he’d gone forty hours without eating, Jesus’d almost given himself an arrhythmia and then shot Daryl in the face.

Apparently starvation isn’t ‘healthy’.

“Really.” And then sighs. “I jus’ - don’t wanna lose anyone else. Can’t save everyone, y’know? An’ ain’t like we got insemination nowadays anyways, so. Chance of having a kid being mine is… Real low.”

Maybe back when he’d been younger, he would have considered it. Said fuck it to the dysphoria and decided it was worth it, because for all the worrying he truly loves kids, adores them, wants to give them everything he can, wants to raise them into good, nurturing people. Wants to be a parental figure.

Only then he’d gotten onto testosterone and his body had stopped functioning the way it always had before that, and the idea of risking a kid’s life for a scientific experiment or selfish wants and needs, or even his own, well. He’d rather die than fuck anything more up than he already has.

Anyway. Point is: he can’t get pregnant, and even if he could he wouldn’t want to risk it. Too dangerous, in the world the live in, with the added danger of childbirth death. Not to mention the idea of being seen as someone he isn’t makes him sick to his stomach.

Tara smiles softly at him, eyes glancing between sad and understanding, and Daryl’s heart aches for her. He remembers the stories about her niece, the way she’d broken down sobbing into his shoulder one night about her. Knows he’d feel the same if Carl, or Judith, or-.

He turns back to the pasta and forces the nausea from his stomach. 

“I think,” Tara says, “y’know, if it was different, I’d want kids with Denise.”

Daryl grins. The last time Denise held a baby she’d looked so horrified it was almost comical. She loves kids, sure, in the way almost everyone does, but she doesn’t get them.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Tara confirms, and steals another bit of pasta.

Daryl and Judith both avert their gazes. There are some things too disgusting to witness.

+++

“Stop crying.”

Judith doesn’t listen. She locks eyes with him, bright blue and wide, and opens her mouth into what Daryl assumes is the exact shape as the portal to hell, and lets out an unholy scream of damnation into the living room.

Daryl’s so covered in her lunch that he’s starting to fear a rodent infestation just by virtue of him being alive.

It doesn’t help that Jesus is watching all this happen with a smug grin on his face, eyes glinting.

“You know, if you listened to me, maybe she wouldn’t be upset.”

“You know, sometimes I think about that tree I shoulda left you in.”

Jesus doesn’t dignify that with a response. Goes back to delicately painting his toenails with all the poise of a French king. Like he doesn’t smell like the dead and have hair like a rats nest.

It’s been a while since Judith has had a screaming fit last this long, and Daryl knows it’s not her fault, that he’s not understanding her correctly, but he’s going up the wall with the high-pitched noises she’s making.

“I don’t know what you want,” he tells her despairingly, and she doesn’t even pause in her yelling as she slams some of her blocks on the floor with all of the strength and rage a two year old can muster.

Considering how her growth’d been stunted by her not having nearly enough to eat in her early life, it’s quite a fair amount of strength. Either Daryl’s hallucinating, or a splinter of wood fractions off and flies through the air to land with a dull _hnk._

“She wants cookies!” Jesus tells him, and stretches one bony foot out to examine the color painted onto the nails. He pulls it back in with a huff and starts painting again, the deep red going deeper still with every stroke.

At the mention of cookies, Judith freezes in her violent beating of her tiny plush unicorn against the carpet and stares at him with great, watering eyes, like a sad little puppy.

And, look. Daryl’s faced down cannibals and his pa and Merle in a fit of rage. He’s made friends with a fucking tiger and been tortured. He’s gone through hell and back, over and over and over again, but the sight of her tiny little face scrunched up in absolute desperation, well.

That’s the thing that breaks him.

Michonne’s gonna have a fucking field day when she comes back to find Judy’s made a servant out of him.

So he’s relegated to mooching cookies off of a visiting and highly-smug Carol, Jesus at his back with a taunt on his lips at every turn, and by the time Judy’s finally munched her way through three oatmeal-chocolate cookies, her eyes are drooping.

Jesus kisses him against the wall outside her nursey, tongue warm and hot and slick, and Daryl doesn’t stop him.

He’s been thinking about it since the guy’d turned up, how gorgeous he looks when he’s just a little unkempt. Daryl’s always found the guy hot, obviously, because he ain’t blind and he ain’t stupid, but there’s something that settles his stomach to know that Jesus doesn’t feel the need to hide around him, that he feels okay being a little messy, a little less put-together than he normally is.

So Daryl slides a thigh between Jesus’s legs and kisses him back, hands finding purchase on a slim waist, bares his throat when Jesus leaves off with a harsh pant.

“There’s something weirdly sexy about dads,” Jesus tells him, and then proceeds to suck what Daryl can only assume is a monstrous hickey into his skin. “I think it’s the -Daryl, please- think it’s unhh-. Stop! Think it’s the unexpected sweetness, y’know?”

“Eh,” Daryl murmurs, licks a stripe behind Jesus’s ear and grins at the punched out noise he makes, thinks of other ways he could show unexpected sweetness, “never really wanted to bone down w’Rick when he’s got spit up on his shoulder.”

“Fucking freak,” Jesus chastises, “I’d let that man spit up on me if I could watch him be all… Sexy and… Caring… Oh, shit, ye-ah, oh.”

“You want me to call him back? Wanna spread him over that bed and fuck him raw ‘stead of me?” 

The thought makes him feel a little ill; that Jesus might take Rick if Michonne wouldn’t kill him first and he had any inkling Rick’d be up for it. It’s not like he has feelings for Jesus, no, obviously. It’s that Rick’s his brother… Right?

“Nngh,” Jesus pants, and they should really start moving away, Judith’s gonna wake up in a minute if Jesus keeps being this fucking loud, “no, I think you’ll do.”

Daryl shoves him into the spare bedroom and Jesus’s eyes blow black when he makes a promise about just how well he can prove his worth.

And if he leaves bruises on Jesus’s hips, well, that’s just payback for the above-the-collar lovebites peppered over his throat.

_________

So, here’s the deal: Rick’s a fucking asshole and Daryl wants to kill him in cold blood.

Maybe he could understand, if Rick weren’t constantly walking around in a state somewhere between fuck-sated and domineering, but as it is, Rick gives half their meetings now with purple marks somewhere on him, so his reaction to all of this is. Hypocritical at best, and traitorous at worst.

“Oh, you had fun babysitting?” He asks, leaning over and batting his eyelashes. Daryl takes stock of the potential weapons in the room and finds four ways to knock him unconscious in the next thirty seconds flat. “You and Jesus? Having fun with that, huh? All that domestic goddess shit looks good on you, man.”

Daryl hears it for what it is: _payback, bitch, now I get to laugh at you about your feelin’s like you did mine._

That doesn’t make him want to crawl into the cabinet any less.

“Shut up.”

“Oh, don’t wanna talk? I see how it is. Get a new man and all’a sudden you don’t need me? What happened to us, Daryl?”

“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you and take your goddamn wife.”

“You’re gay.”

“I have game.”

“Oh, clearly.”

Walked into that one. “How d’you know I ain’t get bit?”

“Well, did you?”

“No.”

“That’s how I know. ‘Cause you’d never put us at risk. ‘Cause you’re a _softie_ , Mr Dixon.” Rick takes a moment to grin at him, blade-sharp, and then says, “although I’m not sure you didn’t get bitten by _somethin’_.”

“I swear to God, Grimes.”

“So not to Jesus?”

Daryl will not ever admit the ball he threw viciously at Rick’s head, but the look Michonne gives him as she pastes a Hello Kitty bandaid onto Rick’s forehead says she knows what caused it anyway.

They’re both evil, the pair of them.

___________

“One thing you don’t miss about life before the Turn?”

Jesus is sprawled in his lap, hands tapping against the metal roof of the trailer. He looks good like this, bathed in moonlight, eyes reflecting the shine of thousands of stars.

Daryl’s still feeling sated from having come, thighs aching, and he takes the moment to brush a hand through Jesus’s still faintly sweaty hair.

It’d been rushed, the two of them; hands down each other’s pants and tensing every time someone walked around down below. It’s the most brazen they’ve been yet, with this thing, even if everyone pretty much knows already something’s going on besides them being friends-slash-roommates.

It hadn’t been any less satisfying. Had actually felt better, almost, with Jesus letting out these soft puffs of moans against his throat, biting down to stay quiet when Daryl gave him a slow tug.

“Light pollution,” Daryl tells him, and traces the moonlight over Jesus’s lightly freckled skin.

He’s kissed those marks before. Laid out a constellation in the gaps between them, teeth grazing hip bones and inner thighs and a strong back, revelling in the way Jesus always trembled from it, desperate for more.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Daryl nods, watches Jesus scrunch up his face like he’s thinking. “Don’t strain yourself.”

He gets a lazy slap to his gut for his teasing. “I think mine’s ice cream. Or… Maybe… Training?”

“You do trainin’ all the time.”

“Proper training, then,” Jesus says, “like _being_ trained. I wish I knew more.”

Daryl thinks about that bookstore two miles out of Alexandria that’s got a section dedicated to martial arts. Wonders if Jesus’d think it weird if he got some for him, so maybe he could learn, maybe they could learn together.

Daryl’s fighting’s okay, but it hasn’t got the refined edge that Jesus’s does, the kind that comes from hours in a gym moving under instruction.

Jesus goes still for a moment. “I lied,” he says, and sounds just a little wistful, “I think I miss people seeing me most.”

Daryl stares into the distance, at the fire burning near Barrington where Glenn normally sits when he can’t sleep. The seat placed there for him is empty, right now, which means that he and Maggie are probably defiling the meeting room again.

“Like…” He thinks, and swallows, because something about this feels _different_ , feels important. He’s not sure if he’s reading it right. “Seein’ you as more than the guy who can beat people up and go on runs?”

Jesus gives him a relieved grin, all teeth, and then presses it to the soft skin of Daryl’s stomach. Teases his tongue over the thick fabric of his shirt.

“Yeah,” he mumbles, and then sucks. Daryl’s hips twitch up, and Jesus smiles into his skin. “Yeah.”

So that’s when Daryl starts thinking of him as Paul, instead.

____________

Maybe he should have listened to Maggie.

It’s a thought he has depressingly often, now that he splits his time between Hilltop and Alexandria, but it doesn’t make it any less humiliating.

He hates feeling like an invalid, like he’s useless, which is partly why it takes him so long to bite the bullet and actually call through on the walkie for help.

She’d told him, brown eyes solemn, that a hunt wasn’t a good idea. That it was cold, sure, but the walkers were still moving with ease and there was a herd coming, and yes Daryl you can handle yourself but you gotta at least take backup.

He hadn’t taken backup.

And now he’s hauled up in a tree in much the same way he’d considered doing to Paul all those months ago, and there’s thirty walkers clawing at the bark with snarling jaws snapping. Like they’re already chewing.

At least the spot he’s found isn’t in a thicket of trees like any other. He’d managed to avoid the herd for a good while before finally giving up and working his way up the giant oak, grumbling about it all the way even though it actually was his fault. It’s identifiable, so it’s not going to take long for anyone to come and see him, especially since the walkers are making such a goddamn racket.

The walkie crackles to life with the same kind of surge that sounds like a nail being pounded into a coffin. His, to be specific.

“Uh,” he starts, and buries his face in his hand. He gives himself five seconds to be deeply ashamed, and then, “so I kinda need someone t’come take out some geeks.”

The static silence is as much of a reproving glare Daryl can get like this, and he flinches. Carol’s going to murder him if this is how he dies.

She’d find a way. God, he’s terrified of that woman.

“You what?”

It’s Glenn, which is marginally better than Maggie but not by much, since he’s her second in command and will happily snitch on him for a promise of those weird gumdrops he likes.

“I,” he stares down at the groping hands of the dead, and briefly (though not briefly enough) considers just throwing himself down and seeing how long he can last. Hell, maybe he’ll even get eaten. Then he can’t have this conversation any more. “Got stuck up a tree.”

“You’re stuck up a tree.”

“That’s what I said, ain’t it?”

“Yes,” Glenn says, painfully slow, “but I’m processing. _You_. Great, strong hunter. Stuck in a tree.”

“I’m gonna kill you.”

“So are you taking the tree with you to do that?”

Daryl fucking hates his family. Every single one of them. 

“Glenn,” he grunts. Thinks suddenly of how Carl’d called him _Glennjamin_ when he’d stolen some of Rick’s moonshine, and the fact all of them had nearly cried from how fucking funny it was. Not the time. “C’mon, man.”

“Fine.” It sounds like he’s cherishing this moment way too much. “Where are you?”

He pokes his head over a branch. Peers into the distance. He’s deep into the woods, though, so there’s nothing really but trees. All of them significantly shorter than the one he’s holed up in. 

“Near Hilltop,” he says, which is… true. He thinks. The hunt’s been sort of a blur from start to finish, more focused on following the tracks of a group of elk than he had been with noting the blurred lines of dead shuffling feet. “‘Bout five miles out, maybe? Big oak tree.”

“Have you got a flare?”

It’s protocol to have a flare; ever since a group of Alexandrians got lost in the woods for four days during the war and barely got their way back alive, all of the leaders from all the communities have insisted on it.

Since it’s protocol, Daryl does not, in fact, have a flare gun.

He has a lighter.

He’s going to do something real fucking dumb. 

He stares at the golden lighter in his hand and flicks his gaze to the forest floor. Dry enough for the job he needs to get done. Might even distract the dead long enough to get the jump on a few of them, though he knows it’s a dumb as shit idea to climb down with half-dead legs without backup.

He thinks he’s got an idea who they’re gonna send, and he’s dreading the look on his face when he sees what bright plan Daryl thought up now.

“No,” he begins, and there’s a sound on the other line like Glenn knows what he’s thinking, “I got another idea.”

“Daryl,” says Maggie, from fucking nowhere. She sounds livid. “Daryl fuckin’ Dixon, I swear to God if you burn that forest down I’ll castrate you _an’_ Jesus, so help me.”

“That’s a risk I gotta take, Mags,” he says, and starts tying a piece of string over the switch of the lighter so it doesn’t go out before it hits the ground.

“Daryl Dixon!”

“Can’t hear you, sorry!”

Forty yards away, the dried autumn leaves go up in a flare of smoke, and eight miles further on, Maggie Greene-Rhee starts plotting a murder.

+++

The look he gets from Paul when he arrives is nothing short of thunderous.

He’d be alarmed if it weren’t for the fact he’s seen the guy naked and vulnerable, but even so he averts his gaze so he doesn’t have to start feeling guilty.

“Maggie’s going to kill you,” he’s saying, as they work together to cut down the walkers that hadn’t gone up in smoke, words muffled by the bandana tugged over his mouth, “if I don’t do it first.”

“Didn’t burn the tree down, did I?”

“No,” Paul allows, “but you _could_ have.”

“Leaves were too wet for it to spread more. Knew it’d catch that log w’the moss, but weren’t gonna get any further’n that.”

“You couldn’t know for sure!” Paul punctuates this exclamation with a roundhouse kick that sends a walker’s skull pivoting through the air, still chewing on nothing. “You could have fucking died! Or, if it’d gotten anything else, you could have been stuck in the middle of a goddamn fire for no reason other than you’re a stubborn piece of shit who hates feeling weak and died from smoke inhalation.”

Daryl grunts, spears a short walker with one of Paul’s many knives, uses a kick to free the blade and then send it into another that’s come too close to comfort to Paul’s shoulder.

“Ain’t gonna die from smoke inhalation,” he says, and then, knowing it’s a terrible idea but not stopping himself anyway, “been smoking for years.”

The look Paul levels him with then could take down a fucking town.

Daryl ducks his head and spears one of the remaining three walkers through the bottom of the throat. It makes a sickeningly familiar _shlup_ noise as he extricates the blade from the rotting flesh.

“I’m going to kill you,” Paul says, then takes down two walkers in one go with a long, sharpened stick, like a people-kebab, “I really fucking am. I’m going to murder you, Daryl. Don’t you get that I- we need you? That you can’t fucking risk yourself like that?”

Daryl’s gut prickles. “I ain’t that important! And I know my shit, Paul, don’t fuckin’ doubt me, ya goddamn bastard, for fuck’s sake, I had it. I knew I needed ya goddamn help, so I called, and I di’nt want ya gettin’ lost on the way, so I started a fire, what’s the deal? It helped, didn’t it?”

Paul’s frozen, though, staring at him with bright, wide eyes, mouth a little slack. “You called me Paul.”

Daryl blinks. Feels something twitch in his stomach that he forces himself to forget about by stomping the remaining embers of the fire down with his boot. “Well. Yeah. Ain’t that what you wanna be called?”

“I-. Yeah, I mean… Yeah, that’s. Fine, obviously. No one…” He trails off, but Daryl hears what he’s saying anyway.

_No one calls me that. No one calls me my name._

Hears the deeper meaning, too, that it means something Daryl might never understand that he’s the one to call him that. It doesn’t make sense. It makes his cheeks heat anyway, so he smears the blood of a walker from his face onto his hand and tries not to think about all those gross feelings he’s been having lately.

“S’your name.” _Of course I’m gonna call you your name, prick. You mean the fucking world to me and I don’t know how to deal with it. This is all I’ve got to give._

“Okay,” Paul says, and takes a shaky breath, “okay.”

He doesn’t yell on the way back, and when he’s getting heavily berated by Maggie back at Hilltop, Paul gives his arm a squeeze.

 _I’m here_ , it says _, I’ve got you._

Warmth settles into his bones and doesn’t leave for a long while.

**_____________**

Paul never stops fucking moving.

If he’s not working in the gardens he’s training the younger kids and if he’s not training he’s on a run and if he’s not on a run he’s on a hunt, because Paul Rovia works harder than God.

Right now it doesn’t feel as annoying as it normally does. Because the one time Paul fucking Rovia doesn’t move is when he wants to drive Daryl to the edge and keep him there.

He might have been actually tortured before but right now he can’t see how it could possibly be worse than this; trapped under Paul’s lithe, muscular body and teeth at his throat, full and warm and needy, and not being allowed to come.

“Hate you.”

“Hm.” Paul rolls his hips forward, and Daryl has to close his eyes on a low moan. “What was that?”

“H-ngh-ate you!”

“Oh?” Another thrust. Another low, throaty moan that he tries to stifle in Paul’s tear-wet pillow.

He’s lost all sense of time held down like this, all that slick skin pressed against him, can’t think past needing to come and needing to be filled and fucked into the mattress. He remembers a time before Paul when he wasn’t constantly gagging for it, but he can’t recall what it feels like now.

“Don’t you wanna behave?”

And oh, okay. That’s - new, and his cock twitches from the thought. “Nah.” 

A blatant lie. Paul punishes him with a pinch to one hypersensitive nipple. The sound he makes in response (high pitched and breathy) is one he’ll deny forever.

“Say please and maybe you can come.” 

He bites his lip. Tries to grind back into Paul’s thick heat. Gets a hand between his shoulders for his trouble, held down all the more effectively. He rolls his hips forward, instead, feels heat lurch in his gut when the sensitive head of his cock touches the sheets, and the flames are only fanned by the noise Paul makes at shifting inside of him like this; low, growling, animalistic.

Paul’s a talker, in bed, all about driving Daryl to breaking point and then letting himself come. Daryl gets loud, but he loses words even more thoroughly than normal when he’s splayed open for Paul to take as he wants.

“No,” he says, and Paul sighs, goes to pull out, and Daryl clenches around him in panic. Paul makes that noise again. “Okay! Fuck, God, I fucking hate ya, okay, please c’n I come? Please? Been good. Wanna be good for y-nngh, oh, hnh, please, fuck… Paul, oh, oh…”

His cock is twitching, now, while Paul fucks him, slow and deep. He can feel him in his gut, feels full to his throat even if he knows that’s not possible, keeps making ridiculous punched out noises and there’s tears in his eyes but he’s _so fucking close_ and he just wants to come and be _good_ , Paul, pleasepleasepromiseplease-!

Paul fucks in hard once, twice, three times, hand sliding under Daryl’s slick stomach to get a hold of his swollen cock, pulling the way he likes it; just a little rough, fingers wet with lube. “Good boy. You can come.”

And he does. Stars burst behind his eyes while he rolls his hips frantically to take all of Paul in, tightening up and making a wounded howling noise like some kind of fucking dog, and Paul stretches out across his back and fucks him right through it with sweet, supportive noises.

Paul follows not far after, body trembling and clenching across Daryl, cock pulsing inside him in hot, thick bursts that Daryl perversely wishes, for a moment, he could feel drooling out of him. Feel used and nasty and wanted, feeling how fucked loose he is as come slicks up his thighs. He can’t, obviously, because Paul’s not a dumbass and wears protection, but.

“Perfect, fuck, Daryl, so fucking good. So tight, so gorgeous, look at you, what a fucking mess.”

Daryl whines. His skin feels fire-hot and he’s so stretched out, legs touching each side of the bed, arms locked under the mattress for scrabbling purchase that’d been helpful at the beginning of this but that he’d kept that way mostly because he sort of… Liked the idea of being just a bit helpless. Up for the taking.

The noises they make as Paul finally pulls out and then tugs the condom off are nothing short of obscene, and if he hadn’t just come so hard he’d blacked out maybe it’d get him going again.

“Y’good?”

Paul’s breath, hot and damp, pressed to the sweaty curls of hair at his nape. Fingers brushing over long-healed and still ugly scars. A hand working its way over his ass to trace where he’d just been fucked raw, just because Paul likes stuff a little dirty and he’s got a thing for seeing Daryl all limp and weak, apparently. He’d be annoyed if he could see straight.

Or do anything more than slide his legs further apart with a desperate noise.

“Good,” he says, and he’s not even lying, “you?”

“You have no idea.”

He thinks he might.

________

“This ain’t a gay club.”

Aaron looks at him with the face of a man utterly done with his shit.

Eric continues spooning spaghetti onto their plates with a single mindedness that betrays the fact he thinks Daryl’s an idiot.

“We’re all gay,” Tara tells him, and pats Paul on the thigh, like she’s proving her point, “that doesn’t make it a club, but… Well… It’s not _not_ a club.”

“It’s dinner,” Daryl tries, desperate, because he’s forty fucking years old and he’s got a gay club, apparently, and it’s the apocalypse and he’s so tired, really, why is this his fucking life? “That ain’t a club, ‘s just a meal.”

“A meal where everyone’s gay.” Paul drops in.

Daryl wonders why the fuck he lets him stick his cock inside him, then remembers how hard he came last time and thinks _yeah, okay, maybe he’s worth it_. Still. He’s not wrong, okay?

“Jesus is right,” Aaron says, and drops a kiss on Eric’s cheek, “we have a gay club.”

“We’re all gonna die.” If anyone’d told him two years ago he’d be sat at a dinner with a group of people more like family than friends with a rainbow centrepiece, he mighta tried to kill them. Like, okay, he likes being gay, loves it even, but he’s so keenly aware he’s _forty years old and it’s the apocalypse and why does no one think that’s fucking weird, okay._

“C’mon, give me some credit,” Tara says with a snort, “if it was my lesbianism that was going to kill me it would have done it a long time ago.”

“I hate lesbians,” Daryl mumbles into his folded arms.

Denise pats him on the back.

Next time he’s going on a run, he’s bringing back soda for her by the van-full.

_________

“You’re such a cliché,” Paul tells him, when he’s just rolled off of him to take a drag of his cigarette.

“Ain’t,” Daryl mutters, but he’s thinking of that whiskey he swiped from Alexandria last month with something close to longing. “Just needed a stress relief.”

“If I were a weaker man, I might find it offensive you didn’t consider this stress relieving enough.” He punctuates this with a crude gesture aimed at his cock. Daryl flicks him in the nipple and passes the freshly-lit cigarette over, and smirks when he takes it.

“Who’s the cliché now, huh?”

Paul glares at him. Daryl goes down on him just to see if he’ll come again.

(He does).

________

“What the fuck.”

Daryl huffs a grunt between his teeth. He’s a little busy tryna clean the blood from under his nails.

“What the fuck _happened_ , Daryl?”

“Ain’t nothing,” he says, and is highly aware of the wound slicing up his back.

It was meant to be a quick run. An in-and-out, so he could grab some stuff for the communities’ kids. He’d been working it out for weeks, now, between getting fucked raw and helping around Hilltop, and he’d left the trailer with no more than the required flare gun and his walkie. He hadn’t used any.

He’s come back with a lump the size of a grapefruit on his head and a three inch gash down his back. Ain’t stopped bleeding since he’d gotten it, and it only hurts so bad ‘cause it’s over one of his old scars, ones that are years old and never healed right at the time.

“Tell that to your fucking limp, you bastard.” Paul flicks him in the shoulder, and Daryl grunts again and folds over the sink. “Tell me.”

Daryl bares his teeth. Thinks of saying _you my boyfriend now?_ But the thought makes his gut roil with something not unlike want, so. Best to steer clear.

He remembers the walkers crowding around the rooftop door, how he’d taken one look at them and thought: fuck it, thrown his bag of finds over the edge (comics and clothes and nothing breakable, thank God, or he’d’a been pissed), and followed with little more than a shrug and a shoulder roll. He’d landed sprawled on the bag and caught the edge of a pipe coming down. Not nearly as graceful as Paul always made it look, which is something he’s never goddamn admitting in his life, because the prick always thinks he’s winning when Daryl says he’s done something pretty cool.

Never acts that way if Carl starts gushing over it, mind, but that’s neither here nor there.

“Fell,” he says, and catches sight of Paul carefully masking his face in the mirror above the shitty little sink, “bit of pipe outta the buildin’ caught me off guard, ‘s’all.”

That doesn’t make Paul look at him with any less restrained fury, though, all jaw-ticking and hands clenching. Only months of being around him keeps Daryl from flinching back and away, ‘cause for all Paul fucks around in the bedroom, for all they’ve sparred, he’s never once hurt Daryl.

Not once, unless Daryl was specifically asking for it.

He swallows. Tells his heart to _calm the fuck down, ain’t nothing happening, don’t need your goddamn anxiety._

“You fell on a pipe.”

It’s deadpan, blank, betrayed only by the way his breathing is just a little shaky.

“Hey,” he tries, “didn’ go an’ impale myself on it, now, did I? Just got caught halfway down. Better’n gettin’ eaten alive, righ’?”

Daryl’s all too aware he’s gone Georgia-drawl, like Rick does if he’s deep in a firefight. 

“You got cornered?”

Paul says it like a condemnation: _you didn’t call for help?_

He’s no doubt doing what Carol and Rick always do when he gets himself into a mess and refuses to bow to asking for assistance: considering shaking him just to make him understand.

Thing is, he _gets_ it, but this time it really weren’t like it was to appease the suicidal tendencies he definitely doesn’t have, Denise, shut it. It was getting eaten alive or getting winded, and really that weren’t no choice.

He’d been lucky he’d drawn all the dead to that rooftop, in the end, since he’d spent a good three minutes having to shakily regain his feet, head going fuzzy with the speed of the blood loss.

“Jumped,” Daryl tells him, because lying’s not worth it, not when Paul can see through him near as well as any of his other family can, “two stories. There was some trash in th’ dumpster below, dropped m’bag on it. Figured it’d break my fall well enough.” _It did_ , he doesn’t say _,_ because Paul looks ready to flay him alive. 

“How’d that work out for you?”

He probably deserves that. “So-so.”

Paul narrows his eyes and then just lets out a huge, gusty sigh. 

(Daryl remembers a conversation he’d had with Tara, stoned on a stash of weed they’d found a couple towns over.

_“Jesus is,” she’d said, hands waving around, eyes red, “like, drama gay. Functional drama gay.”_

_“What’m I?” Daryl had asked, and Tara had pointed her stick of celery at him in consideration._

_“Disaster gay. Eh, maybe bad health gay?” She’d chewed thoughtfully. “Jesus brings out the functionality of you, though.”_

_“’M functional!” He’d said, which was sort of ironic considering his sprawled state across the shitty sofa in Denise’s office, stomach growling and hair everywhere in a way Paul’s_ never _was. Prick._ )

“Sit down. I’ll stitch you up. Too much to assume you’ll go to Carson?” He asks, like he doesn’t already know.

Like after he’d found Daryl, bashing Fat Joey’s brains in with a pipe, he hadn’t seen him stagger into Barrington to sleep rather than get his wounds seen to. He’d woken up with Maggie’s hands stroking up his sides as she’d stitched his wounds closed. Smell of disinfectant sharp in his nose. She hadn’t made a fuss of it, but it’s obvious, now, that Paul’s been paying attention from the beginning, even before all the stuff they’ve been doing.

He doesn’t like the way that makes his gut feel, like someone’s rearranging his vital organs with uncaring hands.

“Hm.” He sits, though, which Paul looks disconcertingly proud of.

Paul’s less gentle than Maggie, more sure. Washes his hands perfunctorily and then sits criss-cross applesauce behind him, bag of first aid supplies set in his lap. Daryl watches him consider the wound in the mirror.

The trailer’s tiny, but Paul’d ripped out the counters to make an easily accessed hospital bed when Daryl’d moved in more permanently. It’s disturbing, the ease with which Paul’s changed everything just to make sure Daryl’s comfortable.

Another gut twist. 

He focuses on the tug of the needle, medical-grade sutures pulling through his bruised, beaten skin. Pain’s easy to deal with. It’s one of the reasons Negan hadn’t bothered sicing his guys on him, when he’d been captured. He’d seen and _known_ , known the ways to tear him apart.

Pain can be easily put to the side to deal with more important things. Hunger’s less easy. Sleep deprivation drives you right to the edge of insanity. 

For all Negan was an evil sumbitch, he was clever about it. Daryl’d give him that, for all he’d spat on his corpse.

“You wanna tell me more?”

It’s not a request, though Paul’ll back off if he really doesn’t want to. “Wanted to get some stuff for the kids. Scouted out some comic book store, figured it’d be a quick one. Had got some clothes for Asskicker, Hershel an’ Gracie. Got to some old book store to look for some stuff f’r the library, an’ I knew you wanted some of that Proust shit, but got overrun. One of the cases was all bitten to shit by woodlice, collapsed, brought the dead on top’a me. Grabbed my shit, made it up the stairs, got to the rooftop, knew there were only a couple ways I could make it. Made my choice. Rather die smashing my skull to pieces on concrete than let one’a them at me.”

Paul grits his teeth audibly. “I wish you’d brought someone with you,” he says.

“Wanted it to be a surprise,” Daryl replies, which is true. He’d been looking for gifts, after all, even if he didn’t want to call them that. There’d been stuff for Rick, Michonne and Carol in that bag, too. Chocolate, bullets, polish. He’d grabbed the bag before hauling ass, but he hadn’t been finished. It’s the kind of thing that’ll piss him off for weeks to come. There’ll be another chance, but next time someone’ll definitely come with him. A chaperone, he thinks wryly.

“Not worth dying for,” Paul tells him in a sing-song voice, “next time you do something like this, I’m telling Carol.”

Fear grips him. The woman’s lovely, incredible. Completely fucking batshit. “You wouldn’t.”

“Oh, but I would,” Paul says with a smirk, “you know she’s already told me if I let you get hurt she’s going to let Shiva disembowel me and serve me to Hilltop on a platter?”

It’s in character of her. He wouldn’t even put it past her. “Don’t wanna risk your own ass, then, huh?”

“No,” Paul admits, “but it’d be worth it to watch you get chewed out. First time I saw it I almost lost my mind, you know. Seen you in the middle of shit loads of fights, but you facing down Carol Peletier? First time I’ve _ever_ been sure you were going to die.”

“Shuddup,” he grunts, but remembers that time, after the war, when Carol’d found out about all his shit; when she’d seen those burns up his wrists and pinned him to a wall and threatened him with a sealed room. _If you hurt yourself again, you’ll lose your hands_ , she’d said, and then plied him with cookies until he’d talked.

“I’m serious,” Paul says, and tugs on the stitches in his back. Daryl grits his teeth against the ache. “That woman’s scary as fuck. I’d rather face the Saviors again than her.”

Daryl agrees. He just reaches back and pats Paul’s thigh with a sympathetic nod. “Next time, yeah, maybe I’ll let you come. Y’ain’t so bad.”

Paul responds like he’s just weaved poetry out of thin air. Maybe he’ll have to compliment him more often, if he grins like that.

________

Daryl’s told he can’t go on hunts alone after Paul tells Carson about the run he’d gone on. Which isn’t so bad; Paul’s getting better at tracking all the time, and it’s good having backup. Then he’s told he can’t do anything like heavy lifting because of the mild concussion, and he curses Dr. Carson out before he almost vomits just looking at the bright light of the medical trailer like a halo around the guy’s head, and thinks, yeah, okay, that’s fair.

“So he’s restricted to bed rest?” Paul asks, and Daryl glares at him because if the guy thinks he’s stayin’ in bed for god-knows how long then - _ohhh._

“For the time being, yes.”

“Oh,” Paul says, “well, alright then. Can you tell Maggie I won’t be able to go on runs until then? I’m guessing Mr. Dixon won’t want a real doctor treating him, so I’ll have to take that responsibility, I suppose. Is that it? I have to take him back to the trailer.”

Turns out bed rest isn’t so bad when you can spend most of it with a guy much too pretty for his own good. Who knew?

_______

It’s been three days since he’s been cleared by the doctor when Paul relents into fucking him into the mattress with all the strength his lithe body can muster.

“If it hurts, tell me.”

“Mmhm.”

“I mean it, Daryl,” Paul says, and tests the strength of the ropes with a nimble finger, “one bad bit of pain and we stop.”

“Alright, Christ, ya gonna get on with it or what? I’m not gonna goddamn die from rope burn.”

“What’s the safeword?” Paul says, instead of doing anything helpful, like using those hands to fuck Daryl loose.

“Do I gotta?” He relents after Paul glares at him. “ _Fine._ Georgia.”

“Good boy,” Paul tells him, and then, without any warning (as discussed), lands a spank across the curve of his ass. Daryl whines and moves back into it, desperate. “Oh, look at you. You’re so pathetic, aren’t you? Three weeks without being held in your place and you’re already begging for it.”

It’s been so fucking long since they’ve done this properly that his vision’s already sliding out of focus.

Paul lays into him once, twice, four times before he stops, rubs a hand over Daryl’s ass, tells him he’s _good, doing so well, aren’t you, just a perfect boy?_

He’s already drooling a little. It’d be embarrassing if he could focus long enough to feel anything past _hot pleasure Paul good hurts._

Paul leaves for a moment, but he’s back so soon it’s almost like he never left, and when he hears the sound of the lube being squeezed out, he almost cries with the want of it.

He’d showered properly, thoroughly, washed himself clean til he squeaked, fingered himself open on his fingers because he wanted so bad. He’s slick, he knows that, been drooling between his legs since he dried the rest of himself off.

“Want it?” Paul asks, and he can only moan. “Good. Doing good, Daryl.”

Warm fingers touch him where he’s hottest, and he rolls his hips back, needy and slutty for it. His cock drags against the sheet when he moves, and the rope gives an edge to everything that makes his vision a little grey around the edges.

Slim, clever fingers crook inside him, the others rubbing his cock like an afterthought. Like he’s just being used for what Paul wants and it just so happens that Daryl’s in the way.

He whimpers into his tied up arms.

It could be fucking _hours_ , for how slowly Paul drags him to the edge and then back again, crooking right against his spot and thumbing the head of his cock interchangeably. Every movement makes his vision blur, chest bursting with feeling, want, aching need. He knows he’s being loud, gets a pillow shoved between his teeth for his troubles. Feels even more dirty for it, that Paul just mutes him like a tv programme that’s too distracting.

“You want more, don’t you?” Paul laughs, not cruel, but it makes Daryl’s cock twitch hard anyway. “Greedy. Alright. Legs apart.”

He obeys without thinking. Knows Paul would never put him into danger, or trouble, never make him feel unsafe or unworthy.

He loves him. So fucking much, God he loves him, and the thought makes him moan aloud, noise tearing up his throat.

Doesn’t know what he could do without Paul, now, what life would even look like without his constant radiance. Without him fighting next to him, keeping him safe, going hunting with him.

Paul slides into him in slick heat and he just shudders and goes pliant and loose, ropes going slack with the sudden lack of resistance. Paul runs a hand over his back, over ragged scars, new and old, presses kisses to his throat while he fucks him.

There’s rope criss-crossing his skin, now, he knows, like a patchwork pattern of Paul’s mark. They’ll be leaving red imprints into his flesh, after they’re removed, memories of Paul’s work, and god, god that’s good, pleasepleaseplease.

“More,” he slurs, “please, more, Paul, nngh, more, fuck me, pleasepleaseplease.”

Paul pushes in, rough and sweet, dragging everywhere he wants it. He’s such a heavy weight inside him it makes his gut warm. He could stay like this forever, probably, held in place by Paul’s hands and rope and cock.

“Good?” Paul asks, “Atlanta?”

“No,” Daryl whines, because he doesn’t want a fucking break, he wants to _be broken_ , torn apart and put together better with Paul’s expert hands, “k’going.”

“Okay,” Paul promises, and then, because he’s _wonderful,_ does not go back on his word.

It takes six more pushes of Paul’s strong hips for him to come hard and start trembling, jaw going loose and hanging while he lets out moans and whimpers and curses around Paul’s name.

He’s so hazy he barely notices the ropes being carefully pulled away from his raw skin, acknowledging it in the part of his brain that never sleeps, no matter how far down he goes. The part that used to be half of him before the Turn and is now most of him, the constant vigilance that Paul quiets with his hands.

“Drink this,” Paul tells him, “wanna sit up?”

Daryl obeys, shifting against the headboard and drinking the homemade gatorade Paul always gives him after a session like this. “Thanks.”

Paul snorts. “Oh, yeah, it’s such trouble fucking a gorgeous guy through the mattress and then taking care of him after.”

“They didn’t. ‘Fore, I mean.” He says, but it doesn’t make Paul look any less full of anger.

“Who didn’t?”

“‘Fore the turn. Guys at clubs. Didn’t bother with the whole,” he tries to make a gesture that signifies _coddling_ , “this deal.”

Paul swallows, tugs that Jesus mask onto his face that Daryl hates. “They shouldn’t have left. You know that? You deserve to be cared for, after everything, and even without that, it’s-. You’re important to me, Daryl, I’ll never leave you like this.”

“‘Kay,” Daryl tells him, “suck if you did. Love ya. Sleep now?”

He doesn’t process the look of terrified shock on Paul’s face before he’s turning on his side and dozing.

_________

Paul’s not sure what to do.

Okay, that’s a lie. He knows what he has to do, because he’s an adult and adults talk about feelings, or so Maggie’s always telling him, but. Fucking Christ. Daryl dumping that bombshell on him then crashing is like getting gutted and then being told to just put a bandaid on it.

How’s he supposed to stay calm the way he needs to be when he’s interchangeably shaking with anger and frozen with fear, because nobody stays, in the end.

There’s an expiration date on this. Has to be. Why would Daryl want him for anything other than what he’s already got? He’s attractive, sure, but Daryl’s - _Daryl,_ the guy who’d give his life for his loved ones, who laughed when he was captured, who came back from the Sanctuary a different man to the one Paul had met the first time.

Came back battered and bruised and with nightmares that woke him with screams in the middle of the night. Came back with a constant stream of burns on his hands Paul’d never been sure how to address, and then they’d stopped anyway.

And then the war happened and Negan died and they fucked rough and fast in an abandoned Alexandrian home and the whole time Paul’s been in fucking love with him, because he has no self preservation. Will take anything he can get from Daryl, whose smiles used to be stored close to his heart and are now freely given. 

The Daryl he met months ago never would have said he loved anyone. He loved his family, but he _showed_ it; comics for Carl, a stash of bullets for Rick, silver polish for Michonne, baby clothes for Judith and Maggie; that run he’d gone on, even, that lasted three weeks and when he’d come back Maggie had hugged him so tight he’d looked like his eyes were popping out, a stack of photo albums between them. He’d been apologising, for not grabbing more, and she’d smacked him and kissed him full on the mouth just to see him flail.

The way he always gave Carol physical affection even though Paul knows he’s not sold on it quite yet. Because that’s how she deals with things. How, when Glenn went blind during the war, he’d brought him back into himself with a tough love Maggie hadn’t been capable of.

How he brings back fresh meat for Paul all the time, how he grabbed leather bracelets on a run just because Paul liked them as a stress reliever (had a thing for fidgeting nobody _but_ Daryl’s ever noticed), how he spends so much of his time making sure the people of Hilltop and Alexandria are settled even if he’s crawling out of his own skin. How the first time they’d met Daryl had only been there to get something for a friend, because nothing was too much for the people he loved.

How could a man like that, wrought from iron and diamond, ever love someone like him, who hid behind a façade of a savior that could never come? A man who never let himself get close to anyone before Maggie?

It was unthinkable, and yet… Daryl didn’t lie.

He didn’t fuck around, he didn’t beat around the bush; if he was thinking something, you’d know it. Lying was for sick kids and about his own wellbeing. It wasn’t directed at other, healthy people who he hung around with voluntarily.

He’s a closed off guy, unless you know him, but fact of the matter is that Paul _does_ know him, intimately. He knows the ways Daryl shows affection, and he’d have to be blind to not see the trust that’s inherent in Paul being allowed to touch him. Being allowed to hold him close and fuck him and _tie him up_ , a man who’s suffered his whole life with feeling powerless and still let Paul have that bit of control because he’d _seen_ Paul needed it as much as he needed to be told what to do with no chance of making a mistake.

God, they’re so fucked up, he thinks, so fucked up. Both of them so unsure of their own worth.

It makes sense, he thinks, watching Daryl twitch in his sleep. He brushes a hand across his cheek, and Daryl’s face smooths out. It makes sense he’d fall in love with him.

He’s the best man he’s ever met.

So, fuck the idea of an expiration date, the idea of feeling more than Daryl did, really, because… That was impossible. Daryl felt so much, that was obvious. If he loved you, it was for life. If he trusted you, that trust came hard-earned and fought for. It would take a world-changing force to take that trust back. To take the protection he granted his loved ones back.

He watches Daryl’s hands twitch, places his fingers in the spaces between Daryl’s own, and he settles down, breathing deepening.

So. They love each other, apparently. Now he just has to… Talk about it.

Simple enough.

_Fuck._

_______

“This is weird,” Maggie tells him, as he’s frying up some bacon. “You, actually dealin’ with your feelings? Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Maggie,” he says, trying to work out if it’s done, trying to remember if Daryl liked it crispy or halfway to alive. “I love you, but I will kill you.”

Maggie snorts. She moves her eyes away to watch Glenn across the grounds, where he’s navigating seamlessly through the crowd of breakfasting Hilltop residents.

He remembers when he’d been brought back here after a firefight. Held tight in Daryl’s arms and dropped at the Doctor’s door for no chance of refusal: _fix him or I kill you_ , his stance had said, because Daryl Dixon doesn’t know how to calm the fuck down.

It’s amazing, now, watching him move like he’s been this way forever.

“Y’know, me and Glenn, we fucked in a pharmacy before we talked about our feelin’s.” Maggie says this all very matter-of-factly, and even though he knows differently, it’d make sense if Daryl was biologically Maggie’s brother. They’re both so blunt about things in a way that comes from seeing and knowing the worst. “Is this your version of the pharmacy, Jesus?”

Paul rolls his eyes. “Depends how long you were in the pharmacy for.”

“About ten minutes,” Maggie says, “his stamina wasn’t up to par back then.”

Paul almost cries into the omelette he’s making.

+++

Daryl’s awake when he gets back to the trailer with the plate of food, which he’d expected.

There’s only been about four times in the history of -this thing they’re doing- that Daryl’s actually stayed in bed longer than him, and three of those were because he was recovering from serious injuries.

“Hey,” Daryl says, grinning, “I got a servant now?”

“Don’t be an asshole,” Paul tells him.

He gives Daryl the tray, and considers his options. He could go the whole romcom way of admitting it, with a huge dramatic speech and real tears, but Daryl might actually slit his throat for it.

He decides, instead, to go for it the way Daryl had last night. Calmly, sedately, like it’s the obvious response to this.

His hands are trembling. He plays with the hair tie on his wrist and pulls his hair into a bun. Doesn’t miss the way Daryl eyes him up, like he wants to eat him. So far so good, then.

“Figured I’d go the extra mile,” Paul shrugs, like he doesn’t want to drown himself in the pond Maggie’s digging out of Hilltop’s boundary, “since that’s what Glenn did with Maggie.”

Daryl eyes him warily. “You wanna fuck in a pharmacy?”

Why is this his life. “No, I don’t wanna fuck in a pharmacy, Daryl. There’s no feasible reason for it! We drained all of them of their supplies ages ago and- you know what? That’s not the point of this.”

Daryl’s staring at him like he’s lost his mind. Honestly, he doesn’t feel far from it. “Paul? Y’okay?”

“Yes,” he tries, even though he’s not fucking okay, because if this is a mistake he might actually just let himself get shot by rogue Saviors, “I mean. Probably? Uh. Eat. I don’t want to look at you while I do this.”

Daryl stares, blinks, drags the food towards him. He always eats with this single-minded intensity, cheeks bulging like a chipmunk, solely focused on the food. It’s probably a response to going so long with no solid food source, even before the Turn.

Paul gets it. He loves him. Oh, lord, he fucking does, too.

“This isn’t,” he says, and backtracks, because nope, that’s not gonna work, “I don’t. What’re we doing, Daryl?”

“...Eating?” He says, even though he knows what Paul means. Paul gives him a withering glare he responds to with a heavily scarred middle finger. _Very symbolic_ , Paul thinks drily.

“Shut up. With… Whatever this is. What is it, Daryl? To you, I mean.” He sounds needy. He hopes Daryl can’t tell.

Except Daryl’s stopped eating, and there’s a panicked twitch at his mouth. “Paul, listen, I didn’ mean to make it weird, y’know? I jus- I thought you wanted it. I’ll get out, man, I’ll leave, ‘f that’s what you want, shit. Sorry, fuck. I don’t… You gotta know I never woulda hurt you on purpose, right?”

Paul’s the one staring. The one watching as Daryl slowly unravels, hands shaking, wrists cracking like he always does when he’s stressed out of his mind.

“Daryl!”

“...-and I can jus’ go to Alexandria, help Rick with farmin’, God, I ain’t… I ain’t never meant to… ‘nd now I’ve fucked this up and it’s all I got and…”

“Daryl, please.”

“I just… Ya mean a lot to me, Paul, and I can’t-mmf!”

Paul cuts him off with a kiss, fingers curling together at the back of his neck, going up on his tiptoes because Daryl’s disgustingly tall, despite how he holds himself. He’s seen the scars. He knows why. That doesn’t make it easier to watch him curl himself down and look like he’s going to war every time someone so much as glances at him on his bad days.

Paul loves him for it. Loves all of him. Desperately. It’s disgusting and embarrassing.

Daryl’s shaking, whole body trembling like a leaf, and Paul should have asked, really, but he hadn’t had the time to process before he’d already been pressed against chiseled, smooth heat.

“Don’t want you to leave,” he says in between shaky, panting breaths, because even now when his heart’s going a mile a minute, the idea of not kissing Daryl makes his very bones burn, “want you to stay. With me. For however long you want.”

“Paul,” Daryl whispers, fingers clutching at Paul’s hips, his spine, his shoulders, coming to rest on the soft tendrils that fell from his bun, “don’t. If you-.”

“I love you,” he says, fierce, and _hears_ Daryl’s breath hitch, feels the way his chest shudders with the intake of a breath, “I love you, and I don’t want you to go, and I know this isn’t what you wanted going in, an awful way to show it, and you can say no, but God, I love you.”

“...Shouldn’t talk ‘bout your dad that way,” is what Daryl decides to respond with, but Paul can feel the way his heart’s racing, the smile against his mouth. He hadn’t realised how rare it was to pull out one of those smiles until Rick’d mentioned it in passing. 

“I fucking hate you,” Paul tells him, but Daryl feels him grinning, too.

______

“I think ‘m datin’ Paul,” Daryl tells Rick one night, when they’re both on watch.

He and Paul had turned up sometime earlier, dropping off supplies and deciding to stay more out of bone-deep exhaustion than actual desire to help out. They’d still taken shifts on the catwalks, though, because neither of them can stand the idea of not doing anything.

Rick freezes where he’s tossing stones over the edge of the wall, attracting one of the bumbling walkers into a stake. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Holy shit!” Rick says, and then suddenly Daryl’s got an armful of Rick Grimes: Fearless Leader, and his hands hover in midair before he returns it. “Oh, my God, fucking finally, Michonne said we were reading into it but I was right, and she owes me that Big Kat now, oh, Daryl, you’re a lifesaver, I’m gonna take a bullet for you.”

“Rather you don’t,” Daryl tells him, which is as close to affection as he’s going to get right now, ‘cause he’s still sort of off-kilter from Rick’s sudden assault. There’s the press of sloppy kisses against his cheek, dramatically slurping, and Daryl grunts and shoves him back. “Think Michonne’d run me through if ya died on my account.”

“Point.” Rick gazes back out at the newly-speared walker, and then smiles all wide. “I think she’s going to propose.”

Daryl feels his gut swoop, amazement curling through them.

Rick and Michonne, they’ve been solid since before the war, even without a label on it, everyone knew it was just a matter of time. Carl’s taken to calling Michonne mom, which never fails to make the katana-wielding angel cry. Judith calls her mama. Rick treats her like the sun shines out her ass, and Christ, he might not be wrong.

They’d all be dead, ten times over, without her. Michonne’s incredible, family, awe-inspiring. Constant giver of sly jokes in the shape of support. Daryl _loves_ her, he does, even if he doesn’t get the appeal of women, because you’d have to be fucking dead not to see how Michonne shines like the sun.

Rick treats her like it. They deserve each other. “Yeah? Why’s that? Why’s someone want your dumb ass?”

Rick punches him in the shoulder, but there’s a grin that won’t leave his eyes even as he tries to be stern. “I found a couple rings in our sock drawer. And I overheard her an’ Carl talkin’, the other day, ‘bout making it official.”

“Thought you was gonna ask her?”

Everyone’s thought it; Rick hasn’t been subtle, after all. He and Paul have had more than a couple conversations about when Rick’d get his shit together.

“Was,” Rick agrees, “but I’m not stealing her plan. I’m not looking for a deathwish.”

“Fair,” he says, but Rick hears what he means: _happy for you, brother_ , and pats him on the back with a bounce to him he’s only seen glimpses of since the prison days, back when Rick spent his time knee-deep in cow shit.

The walker manages to smash its face into a second stake, and the growling abruptly stops. He and Rick exchange a look, and then simultaneously exclaim, “that’s you.”

___________

Daryl’s trying to plant some tomato plants in Rick and Michonne’s garden when he’s catcalled.

He rolls his eyes, and Carol grins at him from her perch against the porch railings. “Well, hello, sexy.”

“Shuddup.” He digs three holes into the ground and plants seeds into the gaps. Remembers Hershel, and has to grit his teeth against faded anger and sadness at his death.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” Carol taunts, and she _could_ be helping, but she won’t. Probably she’s been helping out since she got here a couple days ago. “I’m sure a certain man would agree.”

He blushes, right up to his ears, and hopes to God it’s hot enough that he can pass it off as heat stroke. Judging by the cawing she lets out, he can’t. 

“Ain’t’cha just the picture of calm,” he teases, brushes his bangs back with dirty hands, doesn’t care about the streaks he leaves in their wake, “ever since you became Zeke’s kept woman?”

Carol gives him a look that could level cities, but which only makes him grin. After a moment, she grins back. “You know Shiva’s still taking a shit in the library every time he denies her a whole chicken?”

He guffaws into his trowel, lets the sun hit his face, because it’s actually nice out without being blistering, for once, and that’s rare. “Love that cat.”

Carol walks close to him, then, gives him a kiss on his cheek and brushes his hair behind his ears, eyes flitting all over like she’s searching for something. She seems to find it, because a grin glows to life across her face. He remembers when they were rare for her, too, when she was so frequently blinded with pain from Sophia, from the lingering effects of Ed and his iron fist. She’s more light, now, now that she’s let herself fall in love with a good, kind man. He’s so happy for her it hurts his chest, like the space is too small to contain the enormity of the emotion, and he crushes her into a hug because God, he’s missed her.

Talking to her over the crackling walkies is good, but it’s nothing compared to having her here, at his side, like when they were at the prison, when he used to take naps in her lap and she used to tease him over the women who flocked to him like he was a mother duck.

“Missed you,” he tells her, “been too long, woman.”

“Hm,” she agrees, and tucks her face into his shoulder, “I trust your man’s been treating you right, Mr. Dixon?”

“Why? You gonna come whisk me away to Kingdom’n reaffirm our love affair?”

She cackles, loud and wild, and he has missed her. He’s spent so long since the war in his own head or with Paul, flitting between communities to try and fix what he can, and he’s seen her often but not often _enough_. Not constantly, like he had before, when he used to know everything that went on in her life because he was a part of it. It’s good, he knows, that they’re not as co-dependent, he’s read enough of that book to know using someone as a crutch is a bad idea for everyone involved, ‘specially when both people were as unstable as they were.

“He is,” Daryl tells her, because lying to Carol is like having his fingernails peeled off one-by-one, “he’s good. And Ezekiel? How’s he?”

Carol gets a far-away look on her face he’d laugh at her for if he wanted to be split open from mouth to anus. “He’s great, as always. Nice, pretty… _Very_ pretty. Good cat-daddy.”

Daryl snorts. He remembers the first time Ezekiel had allowed him to go near Shiva, the way the huge motherfucker of a tiger had butted his hand like a kitten. Ezekiel’d been so shocked he’d slipped out of King-Mode and gone to regular ol’ Washington accent, to Daryl’s pure delight.

“He’s good people,” he tells her, and she kisses his nose, “I’m happy for ya, woman. God knows anyone who can deal with you deserves an award.”

She flicks him on the forehead, hard, and he grunts in pain. “Same with you, pookie,” she tells him, voice soft but not in that creepy way she uses to trick people into a false sense of security, “he’s good people, too.”

“Yeah,” he says, and thinks about the way Paul’d grinned up at him from the bed this morning, blond hair shining in the sun, teeth biting at his full bottom lip, “he is. He really is.”

_________

“Put me down.”

“No.”

“Daryl.”

“Nah.”

“Mr. Dixon…!” Paul whines, shaking in Daryl’s grasp and trying (and failing) to get himself free. Daryl kinda wants to give him tips on how to get out of situations like this, but then he wouldn’t get to drag Paul through Alexandria’s streets, so.

Some things he must sacrifice for this life.

“Told ya not to steal that,” Daryl reminds him, as Paul slumps and just starts tapping on Daryl’s ass like a set of drums, “didn’ I?”

“I don’t think eating your nuts warrants the assault and removing of my person,” Paul says, and then, grumpily, “don’t laugh. That wasn’t even meant to be sexy.”

“You’re not sexy,” Daryl says, which is a blatant lie, but. Well. No one’s going to call him out on it. Even the people watching them, since half of them are scared shitless of Daryl, and the ones that aren’t know it’s right to be scared of Paul. “You’re just a thief.”

“You knew this from the moment we met,” Paul tells him, all lilting and high and _annoying_ , “and yet you still fell for me. Anyone would think you’re used to making bad decisions.”

“Wasn’t a bad decision.” And then he shakes Paul around a little when he makes a smug noise. “Least til you went and ate my nuts.”

“Woah, boy,” Rick says, glancing up at them from below his dumb hat when they walk past him and up the porch steps, “there are children around.”

“Eat my ass, Grimes!”

He finally sets Paul down when they get up into the attic room of the Grimes’ house, and Paul just crosses his arms over his chest and pouts. “I was hungry.”

“Carol made cookies,” Daryl says, and pokes him in the cheek, “coulda ate some’a those. But did you? Did you my _ass_.”

“I love your ass.”

“I’m gonna kill you in cold blood.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re hot when you’re angry?”

Paul moves closer, face going from faux-petulant to deliberately smoldering, eyes darkening, lip pulled between his teeth. He looks good like this, which isn’t fucking fair. Daryl’d been saving that packet of nuts, for fuck’s sake, and now his boyfriend is trying to seduce him, and actually succeeding.

Daryl wonders when he started being easy for it, and then remembers the very first time Paul kissed him with all he had, and thinks… Probably around then, actually.

“Anyone ever told you you got some issues to work through?” Daryl snarks back, ‘cause letting Paul have an inch is inevitably giving him a mile, and wow, okay, he’s not saying that out loud. “‘Bout your self-preservation?”

“ _My_ self-preservation? Mr. I Go On Runs Alone Without Telling Anyone And Come Back With a Concussion? Are you having a fucking laugh?”

Daryl’s gotta give him that one. He reaches out to stroke over Paul’s soft, bearded cheek, and thinks… Fuck the peanuts. They’ve got a couple hours to kill until next watch, might as well make use of the attic bedroom. “A’ight. So you don’t want me to suck you off?”

Paul deflates. “Didn’t say that.”

“Hm,” Daryl says, and slides to his knees. It’s worth the twinge of pain in his calves for the way Paul looks at him, eyes going from semi-interested to burning in a split-second, chest already rising quicker. “Thought so.”

“Stop being so smug and get to work,” Paul mutters, fists a hand in Daryl’s hair, and then Daryl’s got too much in his mouth to try and argue back.

He wonders if this’d been Paul’s plan from the second he’d snatched the packet and tipped the whole thing into his mouth, already open like a gaping maw of sin. 

Probably. Fucking prick.

__________

“Is you carrying Jesus like foreplay?” Carl asks, when Paul’s gone off to go on watch and he’s come downstairs to scrounge up some of Michonne’s lasagne. Daryl wonders for one blinding moment whether he’s just blacked out and gone to hell. “Because Enid said that you’ve been doing it for ages.”

“Carl,” Daryl says, and the kid looks at him, all shrewd-like with his one eye and hair tucked into his dad’s old hat, “first, I want you to know that if y’ever listen to that girl, I’m not responsible for any harm that comes to your person, you got it? Second, if you ever say anythin’ like that to me again, I’m tellin’ your pa about those dirty mags you got under your bed.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“I might,” Daryl smirks, “or... maybe Michonne. Sure your mama would have a lot of things to say about that, wouldn’t she?”

Carl actually pales in horror. Good. “Daryl,” he says, desperate, “I promise I won’t. Please don’t tell dad. They’re not even good! And I’m not even-! I mean, just… Don’t, tell dad, or… Michonne, please, they don’t, and I don’t want them to- and-.”

Daryl gives him a look. Carl thumps his head against the wall like he’s trying to smash his skull in. Daryl can relate, but despite what the kid’s just asked him, he still feels kind of bad about it. He’d seen them at a glance one time, assumed they were some kinda Playboy bullshit, but the way he’s reacting reminds him so much of the way he’d been when Merle’d asked about it years ago it makes his gut roll.

So. He’s gonna be doing this, then. Fucking fantastic.

“Won’t tell him. And… F’r what it’s worth? Me an’ Paul… We ain’t…”

“Fucking?” Carl blurts, and then closes his eye like he wishes he could tear his own tongue out. “Sorry.”

“We ain’t straight, is what I was gonna say,” Daryl regards the kid with what he hopes is some kind of Uncle-like disdain, but probably comes across a bit constipated, which isn’t far from the truth, “but apparently you had your doubts anyway, huh?”

Carl scrubs a hand over his face, blush sliding all down his neck. “I just-. Ugh. This sucks. Do we have to talk about this?”

“Don’t gotta,” Daryl says, “but I know it’s gotta be worryin’ ya, right?”

Carl nods, and Daryl points at the chair so he’ll sit down, because apparently now they’re gonna fucking talk about their emotions. Daryl has no idea how he got to this point. If Merle could see him now he’d be rolling off slurs like water off a duck’s back, but he’s come a long way from trying to burn the sin out of himself.

“I don’t,” Carl says, and he’s speaking into his hands, like that’ll make it easier. Daryl’s not gonna call him out on it, because he remembers what this is like, what it still feels like, sometimes, and he’ll be damned if he makes the kid feel terrible about it. “I don’t know, or anything, but just… Sometimes I see Aaron and Eric, or… Tara and Denise, and it’s just. It’s nice, yeah? But I don’t want dad to know. I don’t- know how he’d react, and I don’t want them to treat me any differently.”

“I know this ain’t gonna help,” Daryl tells him, and Carl looks at him strangely, like he expected him to lie. Daryl just shrugs. “But for what it’s worth, your dad’s a good man. Second I told him about Paul he hugged me an’ cried, ‘cause for all that bull he puts up your dad’s a soppy bastard.”

Carl chokes out a laugh. Which Daryl’s going to count as a win.

He glances around the living room to give the kid time to hastily wipe his nose, eyes drifting over polaroids of Carl, Michonne, Rick. Daryl. Glenn, Maggie, Hershel. Little Asskicker, with all her blonde-haired beauty. Carol, Tara, Rosita. Sasha. They’re all in frames, like before the Turn, because Rick’s a sentimentalist to the end and Michonne indulges him and also secretly likes it.

There’s a tiny model of a cat sat on the mantelpiece, tail pointing to the clock above it, and Daryl focuses on that for a while and blocks out the sound of Carl’s shaky breathing.

“You know,” Daryl says, “first time I came out ‘bout bein’ gay, Merle beat me black and blue?”

Carl flinches. “Oh.”

“Ain’t gonna happen with you, boy,” Daryl says, and means it, looks him right in the eye as he says it, even though Carl squirms, “he came ‘round, eventually. Ain’t never been all happy ‘bout it, but he weren’t happy ‘bout much anyway, so that was enough. But your dad and your mom, they’re different. They’re good people. Why you think I’ve put up with your pa’s bullshit so long? Ain’t for his stellar personality, kiddo.”

Carl giggles.

“And,” Daryl adds, and thinks of getting whipped with a belt and being half-dead in a ditch before being found by Mrs McAllister from down the street, all of nine years old and a slur carved into his skin with a hunting knife. Takes a breath. “Got a lot of people on your side. Ain’t anyone in this town who don’t think the world of you an’ your sister, and ain’t many out of here who think you’re anythin’ less than good, either. I’m one of ‘em. Know that ain’t much, but if your dad ever looks at you wrong, tell me, I’ll kill him.”

Carl nods, shaky, and smiles. “Okay. Um.”

“Ask, go on.”

Carl visibly steels himself, and Daryl remembers when he was young, and feeble, and cried at a papercut. (Which was fair. Those things hurt). When the kid didn’t know how to shoot, or hunt, or do anything other than cling to his mama’s leg. And how he grew up too fast and too volatile before softening out into a mix between Lori and Rick, how he became such a good kid that sometimes Rick talks about him like the second coming of Christ.

How for all he seems like an adult, he’s still not even fifteen yet, and he’s gonna have shit to work through, especially living like this.

“How’d you know?”

“Tha’ I were gay?” He asks, just to be sure, and Carl clenches his jaw and nods. “Guy from my grade at school. Billy somethin’, I think. Jus’ remember looking at him and thinking, y’know, if he kissed me that’d be a bit of a’ight. And then my pa came along and beat it outta me, and I didn’ start feelin’ good about it til I met your dad. Maybe Merle helped, a bit, in that weird ass way he had, but. Your dad? He was the difference.”

“Did you two ever…?”

“Nah,” Daryl says, “maybe I wanted to. But he was with Lori, and then he wasn’t, and after that… Any chance of that was gone. And now the thought of it’s kinda gross, ‘cause for all his flaws he’s like a brother to me, best I could ever have.”

Carl nods. Looks just a little queasy. “I think- I might be bi. But I don’t know! But I just- I like Enid, too, and… There’s a guy in the Kingdom… and… I dunno. Feels stupid.”

“Ain’t stupid,” Daryl snorts, and ruffles his hair, since he’s just taken off his hat to rearrange it and Daryl’s enough of an asshole to fuck up the job he’s just done, “if I’ve got a goddamn boyfriend in the apocalypse, think you’re allowed whoever you fuckin’ want, kid. Unless they’re an adult. Don’t do that. You’ll get hurt, and then your dad’ll have to kill them, and he always gets weird ‘bout that, nowadays.”

Carl nods, wrinkles his nose, and then breathes out. “So you and Jesus?”

“Me an’ Jesus,” he agrees, “who fuckin’ knew?”

“Well,” Carl says, “Enid did. She had a whip-round for it last time we went to the Kingdom together. Everyone bet on it.”

Daryl contemplates shooting himself. Carl just grins at him with his teeth showing, and he figures maybe it’s worth being such a fucking disaster if it means getting this kid to feel okay about himself for a while.

__________

Paul’s still on watch when Daryl’s finished off talking with Carl and polished off half a tray of Michonne’s lasagna.

He’s chatting quietly with Rosita, leaning against the wall and talking down to her. She gives him a wave when he walks up, and he gives her a hug because he’s missed her. He’s been doing a lot of missing people lately.

“Daryl,” she says, and kisses him on the cheek, because they all know he hates it. They all abuse this knowledge excessively. “Long time no see, eh?”

“‘Sita,” he grins, “hope Paul ain’t bein’ too much of a showy prick.”

“Hey!” Paul protests, even as Rosita makes a so-so gesture that means Paul is definitely being That Bitch.

“Mind if I take this watch?” He asks, and she pats him on the head and then the ass as she begins to walk away, arms swinging.

He leans against the gate and smirks up at Paul, where he’s haloed by moonlight and his soft hair. “Hey, Rovia.”

“Hey, Dixon,” Paul rolls his eyes, but Daryl can tell he’s smiling. He’s not as good at hiding as he makes out to be. “Think Rick would get annoyed if you came and joined me up here?”

“Figure Rick can shove it up his ass if he does,” Daryl responds, and starts climbing, “also, you’re a ninja prick, if anyone comes through or wants to leave, you got it.”

“Fair,” Paul sighs, and then presses a filthy kiss to Daryl’s mouth, nimble hands gliding under his button-up, “you know I gave you a lovebite earlier?”

Daryl stares, trying to work out if he’s serious, and Paul presses a finger right above the edge of Daryl’s hip that aches with the telltale sign of a bruise. “Damnit, asshole.”

“Payback’s a bitch.” 

“ _I picked you up for stealing my shit_!” Daryl insists, pressing his fingers into the spaces between Paul’s ribs, where he’s most ticklish.

As expected, famed martial artist Paul Rovia creases in half and lets out a pained wheeze at the slight pressure. “Doesn’t matter. You’re all marked up now anyway. No take-backs.”

“I’ll jus’ get a walker to bite me over it,” Daryl tells him, sniffing, “bet they’d be a better kisser’n you anyway.”

“Think a lot about kissing walkers?”

“Only when you’re slobbering all over me.”

They lean in close to each other, grinning, and Daryl’s chest _hurts_. He doesn’t ever want to be without this. He wonders if this is how Rick feels about Michonne. He thinks it must be.

“Missed you.”

“‘S been two hours,” Daryl snorts, and then leans in to press his nose against the soft curls at the nape of Paul’s neck; the ones he always forgets to comb back. “You, too.”

“What’ve you been doing without me?”

Daryl ticks off a list on his fingers. “Cheating on you with dead people. Did some heavy liftin’ in that shirt you like. Got all messy and disgusting. Looked like a gay porn video. Fixed up a bike an’ ran off with another man.”

“Oh,” Paul says, eyes wide, “was that man dead, too?”

Daryl does not _giggle_ into Paul’s shoulder, but if Carol heard it she might say it was. That’s okay, though, because Carol’s a filthy cheating liar.

“Talked with Carl some,” Daryl adds, when Paul’s stopped chuckling into his neck, “kid’s great.”

“Yeah,” Paul agrees, “still can’t believe he managed to trick me into getting off that van and letting him go to the Sanctuary alone. He’s definitely Rick’s kid. Although…”

Paul pauses, for a while, and Daryl pulls back to look at him, the way his face has gone just a little considering, tongue sliding over his teeth like it does when he’s thinking. “I think he gets a lot of his personality from you, too, you know?”

“Shut up.”

“No,” Paul insists, poking Daryl right in the bellybutton, “Rick wouldn’t do that kind of thing without telling someone else first. You would. And he thinks the world of you -don’t look at me like that. Didn’t you say you’ve been with him since the start? And Judith? Of course he’s going to pick up some of your personality traits.”

Daryl’s blushing. He’s suddenly very thankful that Carl does nothing but run his mouth, because if Paul saw him in the light of day right now he’d never live it down.

“You mean a lot to them,” Paul tells them, and then, like he’s pulling all the strength he can into his body, “and me.”

“Paul,” he mumbles, and kisses him, because he doesn’t know how to say _I was falling apart before I met you_ and _you’ve helped me get better_ and _you’re a good man and you don’t believe it and I can’t understand why._

Paul grins against his mouth and says, voice low, “you know, Rick can’t really complain if _one_ of us is paying attention.”

Daryl’s too hard to say no. Just nods jerkily and Paul smirks, pushes him up against the wall and tells him to _look out for danger, Mr. Dixon_ , and then there’s a hand around his cock and he can’t think let alone search for threats in the night.

When he comes, it’s trembling, hot, so good it almost hurts, and he cries out right against the hand Paul’s pressed to his mouth to keep him as quiet as possible, and he kisses his throat until he feels bruised and tender all over, over sensitive and aching with it.

“‘M tellin’ Rick,” Daryl grunts, and Paul just drags a hand over Daryl’s inner thigh and then sucks his fingers into his mouth with a sloppy moan that makes Daryl want to cry. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

“That’s my name,” Paul tells him, and Daryl brings him off quick and easy because he knows just how Paul likes it, “don’t wear it -unh-out.”

“Shut up,” he mutters, and doesn’t give Paul the opportunity to make a fuss, swallows his protests like fine wine, and feels warm to his toes.

__________

They’d left Alexandria for a supplies run. Something quick, Rick had promised, because Rick was a dirty filthy fucking liar. _Just a little one, for the kids. You don’t wanna make Judy cry, Daryl, right?_ And Daryl had melted, Judith’s big blue eyes staring up at him all beseeching-like, lower lip wobbling from the force of incoming tears.

He’s going to kill Rick, when they get home.

“Do you think it’s weird?”

“Do I think what’s weird?” 

Paul stares at him over a sea of the dead, machete in one hand and beautifully crafted dagger in the other, and Daryl shrugs, because he doesn’t really know what Paul’s going on about. That’s sort of the state of his life, though. He spends a lot of his time at least partially unaware of what the fuck Paul Rovia’s thinking at any given moment, and he knows it’s mutual.

“How easy it is to kill, now?” He slides a machete through a walker’s rotting skull as he says it, like punctuation. 

“Walkers?” Daryl asks, and Paul shakes his head. “It ain’t easy. It’s just what you do to protect your own.”

Paul nods. Expertly unsheathes a blade and tosses it Daryl’s way, since he’s just lost his own in a walker who collapsed too quick for him to get it back. “Yeah. I don’t know. It just -sometimes I see them. At night, I mean. And I wake up, and they’re gone, but then they’re also kind of not gone at all. And I know a lot of them needed to die, because sometimes that’s what has to happen, and I’ve come to terms with it. But I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to get over it.”

“I know,” Daryl says, and launches onto the back of a stumbling walker, sinks his knife through its skull, and then wipes it on his already disgusting jeans, “I got you, though, okay? Ever need t’ scream ‘bout it… I get it.”

Paul smiles at him, and he looks half-feral, blood caked around his chin, smeared down his coat, bag slung across his shoulders, and still so beautiful that Daryl wonders how on earth he gets to have this, every day until Paul gets sick of him. _If_ he does. He’s starting to wonder if this is a forever kind of thing, and where before that would scare him mindless, now it’s just kind of. Nice.

“Yeah,” Paul nods, shakes out his hands, and then throws three knives at three encroaching walkers with expert hands, and Daryl goes from quietly adoring to horrifically turned on in about five seconds. “I’m here for you, too. Living side, right?”

“Livin’ side,” Daryl agrees, and the round of shots that ring out sound almost like a church bell in his mind, ricocheting around his brain.

Paul’s waded into the fray, body moving like water, smooth and infinite, hair twisting around his face, because for all their talk about constant vigilance, they’d been taken off guard by the herd surrounding the store they’d been looting. 

Daryl watches him fight, and thinks _safety_.

Carol’s right. He needs to get his head sorted.

_____

“I think I might actually be too tired to have sex,” Paul announces, face buried half in the sofa cushion and half in Daryl’s thigh. Which, in his opinion, is giving off some very mixed signals. “God, I’m getting old.”

“We jus’ fought off sixty walkers on our own.” Daryl strokes a hand through his matted hair, working out the knots. Paul says he likes it best because he never makes it hurt, but privately Daryl thinks that’s bullshit. Paul just likes being touched, the little bastard. “Been a while since we had to.”

“I like it,” Paul tells him, and his voice is slow and sweet, dripping like honey, fingers grazing up Daryl’s hip, “with you. I’d do it with you anywhere.”

“Think Rick might ‘ave somethin’ to say about that,” Daryl mumbles, but his heart feels tight anyway. “He got all blood vessel-y when we came on his precious wall, ‘member?”

“S’worth it.” Paul pats over his crotch, and makes a small, adoring sound. “Okay, I changed my mind. Open up your pants so I can suck you off?”

Daryl doesn’t argue about it, wriggles his pants off until they’re around his knees, and then Paul’s bending down immediately, making a soft noise that Daryl’s come to associate only with cock sucking. It’s been making everything real fucking difficult, lately.

Daryl strokes a hand through his hair. “Y’need a better comb. Been tellin’ you for ages.”

Paul pops off Daryl’s dick with an indignance hard to take seriously, considering his hair’s ready for nesting by some very eager, clumsy birds, and there’s precome clinging to his lip. “Can you not critique my hair while I’m trying to bring you pleasure?”

“Mockin’ your hair brings me pleasure,” Daryl sniffs, and then almost cries when Paul sucks wantonly at the head of his cock, “okay, fuck, proved your point! Get back to it.”

“Good boy,” Paul slurs around his cock, and uses his spit to slide a finger inside of Daryl with no warning. Asshole knows what he likes. His stomach tightens with the thought of it, heat pulsing between his legs.

Daryl comes stuffed with three fingers, a mouth on his cock, and Paul grinding his hips down into the sofa.

He decides if Rick’s going to complain about the comestains, he’ll find a new one. Or maybe six.

Daryl’s got a feeling this might happen more and more often from now on. It’s not a bad thought.

In fact, he thinks, hand stuffed down Paul’s pants and bringing him off achingly slow, it’s a very, very good one.

**Author's Note:**

> in case you were wondering, i made a playlist for this daryl/desus **[here](https://open.spotify.com/user/nhgv0ijx0rwd967t4csfvc9v1/playlist/7jPKujH6JLKbBS6lVr0m36/)** , and you can reblog the fic post **[here](http://gaydaryl.tumblr.com/post/170938344556/in-the-dust-we-shine-pairing-daryl-dixonpaul)**


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